K-Cups Mean Lower Sales for Coffee Growers

Single-serve coffee can now legitimately be called “wildly popular,” with more than one in four Americans using the brewing machines initially popularized by Keurig Green Mountain’s K-Cups.

You might think that’s a boon to the coffee-roasting business, but it turns out to be just the opposite. Why? The machines are much more efficient. Just think about how often you make a pot of coffee in an automatic-drip maker, only to end up pouring some portion of it down the drain. The less coffe...